We look in brief here at all the consultation that is taking place this summer in regard to proposed new laws, and other laws that have been enacted recently that will affect SME’s, contractors and employees, including:

The Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act
The July Budget
Tax Free Childcare Scheme
The Trade Union

A new type of employment contract – the Employee Shareholder Contract – came to life on 1st September 2013 (as part of the Growth and Infrastructure Bill). UPDATED 2016.
Under this new contract employees give away some of their employment rights in exchange for receiving shares between £2,000 – £50,000 in their company (and benefiting from tax advantages on these shares).

At the beginning of July 2013 the Ministry of Defence published a whitepaper aimed at helping them plan their resourcing requirements when reserve forces are deployed on operations. The whitepaper made several suggestions relating to reservists normal employment and made a commitment to provide employers with fewer than 250 staff “more notice [of when their

Many employers, if a relationship with an employee is not going well, for whatever reason, may consider ending that relationship and will hope to start a conversation with an employee to end their employment by mutual agreement (which usually comes with an appropriate sum of money as compensation), rather than pursue a dismissal in other ways.
From 29th July 2013

Several important changes will happen to Employment Tribunals at the end of July. Firstly, and most importantly, Tribunal fees are being introduced. In addition, some Employment Tribunal Rules are changing and Compensatory Award limits are changing. Here we’ll run through the changes.
The new rules:

Last year there was an important employment law case about employment status that showed that Employment Tribunals would focus on the actual reality of working relationships when determining whether someone is self-employed or not, and not focus on what the contractual documentation actually said (Autoclenz v Belcher, see the details here).
This year there has

If you work abroad you may now be able to claim unfair dismissal in the UK if you are dismissed. With unemployment rising in the UK, British workers may have to look abroad for employment, and of course many multinational companies have employees constantly moving across international borders.